On Memorial Day, I have set up a link to Regime Change Iran, a blog dedicated to bringing news to, and about, the oppressed people in Iran.
Iran has one of the most cosmopolitan, educated, urbane populations in the Middle East. For those who were not yet born or are too young to remember, in reaction to the oppression of the Shah and his dreaded secret police, the Iranian people rose up in a revolution in the 1970's. Their leader was Ayatollah Khomeini, an elderly Islamist whose stern visage contained the seeds of Iranian religious fascism. Despite his residency for many years as a guest of the French, he hated the West as decadent and depraved. When he took the reins in Iran, as with so many other revolutionaries throughout history, he slowly took more and more power to himself and his cronies; the Mullahs now have absolute power, and are absolutely corrupt and evil. Anytime men seize on absolute power, no matter how noble their cause, corruption and depravity follow. It only underlines how fortunate the American people were that our earliest revolutionary leaders were men who not only believed in freedom for themselves, but trusted their fellow citizens with freedom; they were not perfect, but they were great men. Our democracy continues to work because, until recently, the winners and losers played by the rules and accepted the outcome; I do not need to point out how this is endangered by our current state of affairs.
Iran did not have the good fortune to have a Jefferson, or a Hamilton, or a Washington; they had the Mullahs. Revolutionary regimes need to have enemies to justify their repression in the name of freedom and liberty. They will often manufacture enemies if none are conveniently available. The Iranian Mullahs have declared that the United States, the "Great Satan" and Israel, the "Little Satan", are the enemies of Islam and need to be destroyed. The Iranians have been and continue to be one of the three linchpins of world wide Islamic terror; the Saudi Wahhabi thugs, Princes and others, form the second leg of the triad. Saddam Hussein and the Baathists of Iraq were the third leg; while not quite off the field of battle, they are no longer a threat to us directly at home, thanks to our brave men and women who continue in harm's way in Iraq today.
We will never be free of the threat of terror until the Iranian people are free. For their benefit and for ours, I am supporting the efforts of the blogosphere, in my own humble way, to help the Iranian democratic dissidents in their battle against the thuggocracy that afflicts them.
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